Explorations

India bombards your senses from the moment you emerge from the airport. The intense heat, the humidity, the crowds. You’re mugged by sounds, colours, smells. The hustlers are waiting, the beggars, the sick and disfigured. You struggle to take in the poverty, the wealth, the architecture, the dirt, the fumes, the green palms, the blue skies, the cattle, the dust

Of Stones, Sand and Survival, and the Big Deep Blue – Egypt This piece was written a few years ago during a period of rising Islamophobia in the UK and beyond. My intention, among other things, was to demonstrate that it is absolutely safe to wander the streets of predominantly muslim cities and towns, to take up with local folk

Nothing prepares you for this place. You’ve read much about it, seen reports, accounts, documentaries, films. Maybe you know or have spoken to survivors or their families. So you think you know what you’re letting yourself in for. But you don’t. You really don’t. It begins with the moment you realise you are going (and it is a sense of